Better Left Buried
by PrettyLittleWreck
Summary: Remy, Scott, Kurt, and Pietro go to Caldecott County to learn more about Rogue, but soon regret knowing what they do. Just a look into Rogue's powers with a dark little twist. For the moment it's a one-shot, but I'm debating continuing it if people seem to like it, so please review if you want it to be continued. Rated T for dark themes ad mentions of suicide.
1. Chapter 1

Better Left Buried

**Disclaimer: so I wanted to put a darker spin on Rogue's past and powers, and I'm honestly not sure if I want to make this just a one-shot or if I want to continue it. Let me know what you think, please! It includes several characters but focuses on Rogue. Reviews are appreciated, even the bad ones!**

They weren't sure why they were here. Most of them sent glares at each other and wanted nothing more than to brutally fight to the death then and there, but of course they knew they couldn't. They needed to finish the mission, even if it was random as all hell and they weren't even all on the same team. The X-Men were mixed with the Brotherhood, and tension was high between the groups. Scott, and Kurt stayed as far away from Pietro and Gambit as they possibly could. They were in Caldecott County, Mississippi, and they were trying to find background information on Rogue. Honestly, none of them knew why the sudden interest in her had started, but both Erik and Charles said it was very important that they found out as much about her past as they could, and none of them could deny that they were curious about their friend and teammate's past. She was very secretive, after all, and it drove them crazy trying to figure her out.

"Can we stop glarin' at each otha long enough to finish the mission?" Gambit asked finally. "The soona we ask some questions from anyone who might'a known Rogue, the soona we can get home." The others grumbled but did as they were asked, finally agreeing to continue with the mission instead of just standing around and wasting time.

"Where should we ask first?" Pietro asked, looking around. Caldecott County was small, so he figured it wouldn't be that hard to get what they were looking for. They stepped into an inn and Scott walked up to the counter, smiling pleasantly at the woman behind the counter as the other three followed him.

"What can I do for y'all?" the woman asked, looking up from her computer with a friendly grin.

"Actually, we're looking for some information on a friend of ours that used to live here. Anna Marie? Do you know her?" Scott asked as the others crowded around him. Instantly the woman's smile dropped into a frown.

"If this is some kind of sick joke, it's not very funny." She huffed angrily.

"I'm sorry? I don't understand." Scott's smile faltered. The woman glared at him. What she said next turned made their blood run cold.

"Anna Marie's dead. Has been for eleven years.

* * *

Half an hour later, they found themselves in Old Rose Cemetery, standing in front of a headstone that read Anna Marie D'ancanto, December 23 1998 to January 20 2004.

"This is impossible." Pietro muttered.

"Guys, if Anna Marie is dead…" Kurt turned to look at them with a grave, slightly horrified expression. "Then who the hell is Rogue?"

"Come on, there's gotta be a library here. We can go google her or something. If she's dead there can be an old article about what killed her. I mean, it's a small town, and it's not every day a six year old drops dead." Pietro reasoned. The library wasn't too hard to find, and Kurt typed Rogue's name into the search bar and old articles instantly popped up, along with images of a smiling, six year old Rogue with auburn hair that fell around her shoulders in loose curls and a big, careless smile. Then there were the pictures they avoided, the ones with a tiny body on a stretcher covered with a white sheet.

"It says here that Anna Marie was murdered by her older brother Teddy. Apparently he shot her in the head before shooting himself." Kurt frowned. "This does not make sense. Rogue and Anna Marie look exactly alike, and they would be the same age, but they cannot possibly be the same person if one of them is dead."

"Maybe they were twins." Pietro suggested. "I mean if Anna Marie was killed and Rogue was her sister, so could've easily used her sister's fake name to keep her real identity secret."

"Maybe, but why go through all that trouble? She could've simply not told anyone her real name, and she's never mentioned a sister. She's mentioned her brother occasionally, but never a sister." Scott glared at the screen.

"I guess we know now why de Prof and Magneto wanted more information on her." Gambit said thoughtfully.

"Yeah. We should get back to Bayville and talk to Professor X about this." Scott decided. They got back to the jet they had flown on and got back to Bayville in a record time of four hours. Instead of seeing the Professor, the first person they encountered was Rogue herself. She looked up when they came in and raised an eyebrow.

"An' where have y'all been all day? I doubt ya decided to get all friendly with each otha just for the hell of it." She said.

"Actually, we need to talk to you, and we want you to be perfectly honest with us." Scott said seriously. She pursed her lips but nodded and they told her about their trip to Caldecott County and what they had learned. Once they were done she sighed and stood up.

"Where do you think you're going?" Pietro demanded to know.

"Just follow me." she replied and they hesitated before doing so, following her across the grounds to the forest area around it, where she stopped and turned to face them. She pointed at the ground.

"See that snake?" she asked and they looked down at the rat snake at their feet.

"It's dead." Scott observed. She nodded and took off her gloves before bending down and picking up the serpent. As soon as she came in contact with it it came to life in her hands, flicking its tongue and curling around her hands lazily. The boys jumped and stared at her in shock and horror.

"I first discovered my powers when I was six. My brother Teddy shot himself right in front of me, and I grabbed his hands and begged him to come back to me. But when the cops came they found two bodies. Teddy's, and mine. Everyone assumed that he had shot himself and then me, but that's actually impossible." She paused, stoking the snake's scales thoughtfully. "Teddy was dead before I was. When I woke up I was in the morgue, and I was confused and so I ran, and I learned that everyone thought I was dead, and I got scared and ran. I ended up with Irene, and then I pieced together what had happened. Originally, my mutation was that any corpse I touched, whether it be human or animal, would come to life as long as I touched it. But the moment I let go, the connection is lost and they die again. As a side effect, I experience whatever killed them. Like I borrow your powers when I touch you, I borrowed Teddy's bullet when I touched him." She took a deep breath, and looked at their horrified faces solemnly.

"Once I left Caldecott, I became Rogue. At first it was ok; I avoided dead things and I could touch anything or anyone I wanted without there being any side effects. Over the years, however, the mutation evolved into something stronger, and soon if I touched a living person I absorbed them and harmed them. Irene believes it's because my body is alive, but my soul is still dead, so my body's trying to compensate by taking parts of other people to try to rebuild my soul. I didn't really believe her, but now I'm not so sure." She paused again, waiting for any of them to talk. No one did, so she sighed and gave a bitter, humorless laugh.

"I only know one thing for sure," she released the snake and it died again, and they stepped away as Rogue's neck bent to the side at an impossible angle before she jerked it up, tilting her head to each side with loud, sickening cracks as her neck broke and reformed itself before she finally stopped and rolled her head in a slow circle. When she opened her eyes to look at them they wanted to run, to get as far away from her as they possibly could even though they knew the sight they were seeing would haunt them every time they closed her eyes. Her eyes were completely white, as if they had rolled back in her head. She smiled at them, a dark smile that stretched all the way across her face in an unnerving matter. The next words she spoke sent shivers down their spines and made them shift uncomfortably, made them wish they could be anywhere but there with her.

"The dead," she said, "drag down the living.


	2. Chapter 2

Better Left Buried

**Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men or anything else mentioned in this story! **

Rogue sighed, brushing her hair away from her face. Pietro had bailed, Scott had gone to report to the professor everything she had told them, Kurt had gone to hide, and only Remy had stayed, eyeing her expressionlessly. When he, too, turned to leave Rogue jumped forward and grabbed the sleeve of his coat, stopping him.

"Wait. Please, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. You asked me to be honest with you, and I was." He turned to look at her, noticed her eyes had gone back to their normal emerald color and that her unnerving smile had been replaced with an apologetic one.

"Why didn't you tell anybody, Chere?"

"Well it's not exactly something I'm proud of, Remy." She snapped, then she softened as she sighed again, plopping down on the ground and leaning back against a tree. After a moment Remy sat next to her.

"What'd your brother do? When you brought him back to life?" he asked finally, not really expecting a response but curious anyway.

"He looked around, and he started crying when he saw me, and he begged me to save him, to undo what he'd done. He said it'd been a mistake, that he hadn't really meant it, that he just wanted to come home again. Of course I couldn't save him. All I could do was let him go, and then we both died." She gave a humorless, choked laugh. "Two birds with one stone, eh?" without even thinking, Remy pulled her close to him and wrapped his arms around her, tucking her head against his chest and murmuring soft apologies into her hair. She didn't push him away, much to his relief, just buried her face in his shirt and breathed in his scent. Finally she pulled away, wiping at her eyes and laughing, tipping her head back. Remy loved when she laughed like that, exposing the soft, white flesh of her neck and laughing up at the heavens as if inviting them to laugh with her. She stood up, pulling him with her.

"C'mon, Swamp Rat, enough of this sulkin' around." Her eyes burned mischievously, the brightest gems he had ever seen. "How 'bout you an' I go have some fun?" he matched her smirk, idly fingering the pack of cards in his back pocket.

"What did you have in mind?"

"Murder, of course." She replied instantly, and for a moment he couldn't tell if she was joking or not. She led him to the garage, and he realized he had never seen her drive a car or anything. He assumed she just hitched a ride with Summers. So when she pulled a pair of keys out of her pocket and hopped into a cherry red 1959 Ford Thunderbird, he was pleasantly shocked. She caught his look and laughed.

"I bought her and Logan helped me fix her up." She pat the car's hood affectionately. "I call her Robin." He smirked.

"Named her after a pretty bird, Chere?"

"Fuck no." he jumped. He had never heard her curse once, in all the time he'd known her. "Haven't you ever read the "Batman" comics? Robin appeared in the 38th issue in 1940, originally Dick Grayson but eventually being replaced by Jason Todd, who was replaced by Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and finally Damian Wayne." She announced. Remy raised an eyebrow.

"I never took you as a comic book nerd, Chere." He stated and she blushed a lovely pink color.

"Shut up and get in the car." She growled. "And if you get any dirt on her I _will_ kill you." She slid into the driver seat, easily starting the car and flashing him a smile, barely waiting for him to close the door before taking off, _Robin_ smoothly flying over the asphalt as if it was brand new and not 57 years old. It did have some new features, though, like the nice XM radio and the ability to plug in and play her iPod, which it was doing now. Rogue had a love for heavy and classic rock'n'roll, and at the moment Aerosmith was blasting through the speakers. She laughed over the music, loving the purr of the engine and the way the roads flew by her. She was made to move, Remy realized. She wasn't like the other X-Men, satisfied with their lives at the mansion and content to stay there. She loved to move, _had_ to move, to skip from place to place restlessly and refuse to settle down. And she was made to drive, smoothly exceeding the speed limit but gracefully keeping them from crashing, never once worrying about a turn or a stop, taking it all in stride. She was the kind of driver you should fear getting in a car with but somehow ended up fully trusting, lying your life at her feet with the most relaxed posture and not a care in the world.

"Where do you wanna go?" her voice brought him out of his dizzy descent, grounding him once again in the real world. Her voice sent shivers down his spine, her lazy drawl mixing with the low, seductive rasp to make the perfect harmony. He shrugged.

"You're the driver, Chere. I'm just here for the ride." She smirked. Just the answer she was looking for. Remy waited until they had left Bayville before speaking.

"So, Chere, you still willing to be honest with Remy?" he asked, leaning back in the seat and flashing her a smirk.

"Depends. What did you want to know?"

"Little bit of everything." He paused, watching her hands grip the wheel tighter and feeling her press down harder on the pedal, accelerating a little bit more. "If I ask you a question, will you answer it honestly?"

"Am I allowed to skip the questions I don't like?"

"Oui."

"Then sure, ask away." He thought for a moment, knowing if he asked the wrong question she'd shut down and he wouldn't be getting anything out of her.

"What were you like as a child?" he winced as soon as the question came out, afraid he'd already blown it. To his surprise, she actually relaxed.

"Devilish. I used to play really mean pranks on my friends and neighbors, occasionally my family."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Well before I ended up with Irene, I stayed with this couple for a few months and the wife was in love with rabbits. Their neighbor was a rabbit breeder and so he had dozens of them, and one day while she was at work I stole 30 of the rabbits and I cut all their heads off, put them on sticks, and lined them up outside the house, 15 heads on each side of the walkway. She came home and was absolutely horrified."

"What'd she do?"

"Nothin'. But her husband came out with his rifle, and when he saw what I'd done he smacked me across the face with it." She paused, reaching up to rub her cheek. "I couldn't talk for weeks without spitting out blood. Bastard hits hard." She grumbled irritably, scowling at the road.

"Never imagined you to be the kind of girl to harm innocent rabbits, Chere."

"Well it's not like I did it whenever I could. It was one time."

"One time too many, Chere. Rabbits will never trust you again."

"I can live with that." She gave an amused snort and he chuckled in return.

"So, who was your first crush?" he was anxious to know who could possibly catch her attention, and yet he was slightly afraid of the answer as well.

"Jareth." She replied instantly then added "The Goblin King."

"Goblin King?" he raised an eyebrow incredulously.

"Jim Henson's Labyrinth, released in 1986 and later novelized by A.C.H Smith. Jareth was played by David Bowie." Remy laughed, throwing back his head.

"David Bowie? Seriously, Chere?" she gave him a cute little pout, and he would have loved nothing more than to kiss her then.

"Don't be rude, or I'll make you walk home." She warned, but he could tell her threat was an empty one. He mulled over more questions but she stopped before he could, pulling into a parking spot and hopping out. Remy did, too, looking at their surroundings curiously. They were three towns over, and she had stopped the car on the top of a hill that overlooked the town. She lounged across Robin's hood and he joined her, careful not to damage the car in any way. He glanced over at her and was mystified by what he saw. She was leaning back on her hands, her gloves leaving no prints on Robin's bright paintjob. Her black shirt fit tight to her body, accenting all her curves and making her ivory skin really stand out. Her Goth makeup was gone, and he could see the large cat shape of her emerald eyes and the perfect bow shape of her pink lips clearly.

"Why do you usually wear so much makeup?" he asked and she flinched slightly before pursing her lips and tilting her head in thought.

"It makes people avoid me." she said slowly, thoughtfully. "The less people that come near me, the less dangerous I am to others."

"And all this time I thought you liked looking like a street walker." She did that laugh again, tossing back her hair and tipping back her head.

"Sorry to disappoint, but if it was up to me I'd never put on any of that clown face paint ever again." She laid back, her hair spread across Robin's hood and her head resting on her hands, crossed behind her head. "What about you, Swamp Rat? Why so curious about me?" she raised an eyebrow, smiling quizzically.

"Remy just wants to get to know you better, that's all. Think we'd make the perfect pair." She frowned, grinding her teeth together.

"Yep. Perfect, Gambit, a girl who's been dead for eleven years and can't touch anyone fits just splendidly with a thieving womanizer." She snapped sarcastically, and he met her angry glare evenly.

"I'm serious, Chere. I've seen what we can do together. Back in New Orleans, we helped each other out a lot. I've never met a fille like you."

"Never met a breathing corpse, you mean." She said bitterly and he reached out instinctively, running his fingers through her white bangs. She jumped a little and her glare softened into a surprised scowl. He continued to play with her hair, running it through his fingers and smirking as she relaxed, closing her eyes and humming contently as he did so. She scooted closer to him, her shoulder brushing against his and her leg pressed against his, hands idly clenching and unclenching around his trench coat.

"Well, Swamp Rat, you wanna lay up here forever or are you up for another adventure?" she asked, turning on her side to look at him.

"What kind of adventure you talking about?"

"There's a nice canyon we can drive through and if Robin's up to it once we get through there we can go to the beach. We'll have to fill her up before we get to the canyon, though; there are no gas stations in there and it goes on for quite some time."

"What time do you plan on getting back to Bayville?" she raised an eyebrow.

"Who says we're going back to Bayville?" he laughed, hopping off Robin's bright hood and walking around to the passenger door. Rogue slid of the hood and into the passenger seat, waiting for him to get in before starting the car and driving off, stopping only to put gas in the car. At the mouth of the canyon she pointed out a large, ancient tree.

"They used to hang people there." She stated solemnly. "Sometimes when you drive up here if it's really quiet you can see them, watching everyone go by and struggling against their nooses." Remy looked at her in surprise.

"You've seen 'em, Chere?"

"The dead communicate with the dead, Remy. Not all of us pass on." She shrugged, tossing her hair over her shoulder and glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. They fell quiet again, Aerosmith filling the silence through the speakers. Rogue hummed along, the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips. They didn't talk the rest of the ride through the canyon, both lost in their own thoughts. The sun was setting by the time they reached the beach, but that didn't stop them from walking along the shore's edge and enjoying each other's company. They talked as they walked, jumping from subject to subject without rhyme or reason. Rogue was happy, enjoying the feeling of the sand beneath her feet and the water brushing over her toes. Once it was completely dark they made their way back to the car, but decided to continue driving away from Bayville instead of heading back towards it. They stop at a little hotel just past midnight, and Rogue lounges on the set closest to the window and looks out, still humming under her breath and staring out the window. It starts raining just past one, and the two lie next to each other and put in a movie that bores Remy so much he's asleep within half an hour. Once the movie's over Rogue slips out of his bed and into his own, curling up and snuggling under the blankets and letting the rain lull her to sleep.

In the morning they have breakfast, which ends with Rogue throwing a muffin at Remy for being a smart ass, and then they start the drive back to Bayville. The closer they get the quieter Rogue gets, until she's so still and silent she resembles a photograph more than a real person. This is her Hell, Remy realizes. She's stuck here, tethered to the mansion despite her free spirit and love to roam. He leaves her with a promise, a taunt, and a suggestive wink, and she replies with a sarcastic comeback and an eye roll. And oh, how Remy loves her. He loves everything. Her hair, her eyes, the way she spits out vulgar sarcastic insults as if they burn her tongue, the way she laughs, and the way she teases him. But he doesn't love her as much as the idea of her, the idea of getting the untouchable mysterious girl to fall for him. He supposes that maybe she knows that, maybe she's playing him just as much as he's playing her.

And maybe they'll be each other's downfall.


End file.
